Friday, January 18, 2008

Books Read: The No-Asshole Rule

This book was not as good as it could have been, somehow. The book was not deficient in any particular way. It was well-organized, like a lesson plan, moving from describing assholes to how they damage their surroundings to why they should be kept out (ie the No-Asshole Rule) to how to defeat them etc... It was well-written, with no editorial gaffes (better than I can say for my blog articles) and some dry wit and word play (like "time wounds all heels").

Yet I lost interest halfway through the second chapter, while Sutton was still describing some of the assholes.

Basically, the central idea of the book was originally written up in a short article form, and that's how much meat there was. When expanded to a full (and not very thick but still not a short story length) book he ended up padding the book with lots of examples and illustrations. If it had been meat I could have kept reading, and if it had been engaging fluff I could have kept reading, but in this case - well - I understood the rule pretty well, thank you, and that was pretty much the end for the book for me.